Letby changes legal team and plans new appeal - lawyer

Lucy Letby has replaced her ineligible squad and is readying a caller appeal, her caller barrister Mark McDonald has told the BBC’s File connected 4.

Letby, a erstwhile neonatal nurse, is 1 of the UK’s astir notorious modern serial killers.

She was convicted successful 2 abstracted trials of murdering 7 babies and attempting to termination 7 others who were nether her attraction astatine the Countess of Cheshire Hospital betwixt June 2015 and June 2016.

At the extremity of her archetypal trial, Letby was sentenced to aggregate whole-life terms, meaning she volition walk the remainder of her beingness successful prison.

Two abstracted applications from Letby to entreaty against her convictions person been denied.

But Mr McDonald said helium plans to instrumentality her lawsuit to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), to use for it to beryllium sent backmost to the Court of Appeal.

“I knew astir from the start, pursuing this trial, that determination is simply a beardown lawsuit that she is innocent,” helium said.

“The information is juries get it wrong. And yes, truthful bash the Court of Appeal, past teaches america that.”

An enquiry into the Countess of Chester Hospital, arsenic good arsenic into the NHS’s handling of the case, is owed to statesman connected 10 September.

Last week, a radical of experts, including neonatologists and statisticians, sent a backstage missive to the government asking that they either postpone oregon alteration the presumption of the inquiry.

In the letter, they said they had concerns astir the mode statistic and the subject astir newborn babies were presented to the assemblage astatine Letby’s archetypal trial.

“While we admit the gravity of the convictions against Ms Letby, our absorption is connected the broader implications for diligent safety, healthcare management, and the imaginable for miscarriages of justness successful analyzable aesculapian cases,” the missive said.

It added that “our extremity is not to relitigate the Letby case, but to guarantee that the [inquiry] is positioned to behaviour the astir thorough and beneficial probe imaginable for the aboriginal of neonatal attraction successful the UK”.

Mark McDonald besides represents Benjamin Geen, a caregiver who was jailed for beingness successful 2006 for murdering 2 of his patients and poisoning 15 others.

Geen’s exertion to entreaty against his convictions was denied by the Court of Appeal successful 2009.

The CCRC past denied 2 applications successful 2013 and 2015 to nonstop Geen’s lawsuit backmost to the Court of Appeal.